Review: Athena #1 by Doug Murray, Fabiano Neves and Paul Renaud

What does Athena mean to you? She is both the goddess of peace and of war, in a little bit of Grecian spin doctoring there. The tile of an old fifties musical. The kebab shop down the road. A character in Battlestar Galactica. And of course, Athena were the poster company with various pictures of knickerless women playing tennis, or kittens stuck in an old boot.

Guess which one Dynamite are going with in this comic. Well here’s a clue, there are no old boots in sight. Just a bevy of near naked ladies. Although we do get pretty close to a reprise shot of the tennis player…

We start with the no-memory-found-naked-in-a-clearing-in-a-foetal-position motif, proceeding to backless hospital clothes (sadly no tennis ball) and a walk through the forest in them, following her, naturally, from behind. Thankfully the art is of the Frank Cho/Adam Hughes school, at least at the beginning. There is some inconsistency though, looking fabulous near the beginning, especially the Zeus flashback scenes, but not quite gelling in the nightclub scenes later. Because, yes, this is the Grecian goddess reborn into modern times, watched over by her father, with many godly tales to reenact in a modern setting.

Of course, if the art does get just that little bit better, Fabiano Neves will be snapped by up Marvel or DC, so maybe it’s in Dynamite’s interest to keep him just on the edge with the help of Paul Renaud ,or he’ll be drawing Mighty Avengers in no time.

The book is written by Doug Murray, who has quite the history of writing war comics, with his long run on Marvel’s The ‘Nam – the kind of book you just couldn’t see them publishing post Jemas. And we can expect quite a lot of that to emerge in this title, as string research on the Greek myths is laid out here, then filtered through modern sensibilities.

It’s a very different book to the likes of Vertigo’s Greek Street, more on the Zenescope Grimm’s Fairy Tales side than the Vertigo’s Fables, but this has the potential for a strange melding of storytelling tropes. I’ll be back for #2.

Athena #1 is published today in the US and tomorrow in the UK, by Dynamite Comics